Why Sleep Eludes Me

I'm not sure why, but every few years I enter a phase where I just cannot sleep. It's happened to me ever since I was little, and for some reason I still react the same way I did then: I panic.

I can remember being about 7 or 8 and lying in bed unable to sleep. I would hear all of the nighttime routines taking place, like my sister going to bed, my mother doing the dishes and the two of them finally climbing the stairs to go to bed. I would lay there feeling like the only person in the world still awake and really freak out. What if a burglar came into the house and found me there? What if I never fell asleep again?

Eventually I would drift off after hours of frantic flopping, pillow turning and seven-year-old anxiety. Sometimes I would go into my parent's room and wake my mother, hoping she had the solution. "Go get a drink of water," she would say sleepily, turning over already asleep.

Fast forward about 30 years and you have me now. The difference, of course, is I don't have my own room anymore, and my mother is no longer down the hall. Instead I have my husband, who unfailingly can lay down, breathe in once and be asleep by the time he breathes out. I have nothing but respect for his ability to fall instantly asleep, but on my frantic "Holy shit I can't sleep" nights, it really pisses me off.

On those nights I may as well still be 7 years old. I flip. I flop. I rearrange my pillows. I huff a few times, hoping to wake him "accidentally," but he sleeps like a rock. So finally I just give him a nudge and wake him up.

"I can't sleep," I say pathetically.

"What?" he says, still 90 percent asleep.

"I just can't sleep," I say, still hoping for that magic cure.

Sometimes my husband will rub the sleep from his eyes and try to reason with me, which never works. By that time I'm just in a frenzy, convinced sleep will continue to elude me until dawn, when I'll be so exhausted I won't be able to function. Sometimes he tries to convince me that I've just been asleep and haven't been flip flopping for hours. Sometimes he'll try to rub my head, but will inevitably just fall asleep mid-rub, leaving his hand like a dead weight on my skull. Sometimes he just sighs, mumbles something and falls back to sleep.

I don't blame him. Hell, he deserves a medal for putting up with my night anxiety. Inevitably I always do fall asleep. Sometimes I count backwards from 100, write a letter in my head or do some other strange relaxation trick. I have yet (knock on wood please)to flip flop my way through an entire night, and am usually out by midnight at the latest.

What I can't understand is why this still happens to me. My marriage is great, my kids are healthy, my job is going well and my life is just generally in a good place right now.

I'm a reasonable person, I usually don't panic when I hear creaks in the floor, and am getting over my fear of the dark, but without fail I still fall for my own damn head game every time.

I don't lose sleep because my life is in a disarray, I create a self fulfilling prophesy and lead myself into my own insomniac hell. Hours before bed my head starts repeating the same sentence: "I hope I can sleep to night...what if I can't sleep... uh oh I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep... I'd better fall asleep... I have to wake up soon..." By the time I go to bed I've already lost the battle.

The next morning my husband always tries to console me, reason with me, or at least cheer me up. His most convincing argument: out of sheer exhaustion, the next night I always sleep like a rock.